Abstract
This article is a survey of my scientific work over 52 years. During my postdoctoral stay in Severo Ochoa's laboratory, I determined the direction of reading of the genetic message, and I discovered two proteins that I showed to be involved in the initiation of protein synthesis. The work I have done in Spain with bacteriophage ϕ29 for 45 years has been very rewarding. I can say that I was lucky because I did not expect that ϕ29 would give so many interesting results, but I worked hard, with a lot of dedication and enthusiasm, and I was there when the luck arrived. I would like to emphasize our work on the control of ϕ29 DNA transcription and, in particular, the finding for the first time of a protein covalently linked to the 5'-ends of ϕ29 DNA that we later showed to be the primer for the initiation of phage DNA replication. Very relevant was the discovery of the ϕ29 DNA polymerase, with its properties of extremely high processivity and strand displacement capacity, together with its high fidelity. The ϕ29 DNA polymerase has become an ideal enzyme for DNA amplification, both rolling-circle and whole-genome linear amplification. I am also very proud of the many brilliant students and collaborators with whom I have worked over the years and who have become excellent scientists. This Reflections article is not intended to be the end of my scientific career. I expect to work for many years to come.
Highlights
I was born in November 1938 in Canero, Spain, a small village in the north coast of Asturias, close to Luarca, where my teacher and friend Severo Ochoa, a Nobel Prize winner, was born
We found that the enzyme has an anomerase-like activity, producing an intermediate product that seemed to be the open form of glucose 6-phosphate
In collaboration with Eladio, we showed that the E. coli cell-free system indicated above, using MS2 RNA as messenger, initiated with formyl-methionine the synthesis of two of the three proteins synthesized in vivo after infection of E. coli with phage MS2 [10]
Summary
From the Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa” (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Universidad Autonoma de Madrid), Universidad Autonoma, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain. This article is a survey of my scientific work over 52 years. Very relevant was the discovery of the 29 DNA polymerase, with its properties of extremely high processivity and strand displacement capacity, together with its high fidelity. The 29 DNA polymerase has become an ideal enzyme for DNA amplification, both rolling-circle and whole-genome linear amplification. I am very proud of the many brilliant students and collaborators with whom I have worked over the years and who have become excellent scientists. This Reflections article is not intended to be the end of my scientific career.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
